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Wednesday, 8 March 2017

What Lies Beneath!

After my last post of photographing a Hairy Dragonfly nymph catching and consuming a damselfly nymph, I was amazed that not long after as I continued to watch, an Azure Damselfly nymph decided to walk along the stick where the Hairy Dragonfly nymph had just finished eating her prey. She was on the underside of the stick where she could be seen having a clean up and no doubt digesting her recent dinner. The Azure Damselfly nymph walked very slowly until she stopped right above the Hairy Dragonfly nymph where for a good few minutes, I made the most of this rare photo opportunity of the hunter and the hunted.

Hairy Dragonfly Nymph and Azure Damselfly Nymph

I was not sure if they were even aware of each other there and presume that as the Hairy Dragonfly nymph had just fed, she was quite content to just rest. As I continued to fire off a number of shots, I was startled to suddenly see a Water Boatman appear in the shot and land on the back of the damselfly nymph. This was too good an opportunity to miss and I rattled off 4 shots before the boatman was off.

Hairy Dragonfly Nymph, Azure Damselfly Nymph and Water Boatman

I continued to watch for a while and eventually the Hairy Dragonfly nymph started to move her legs and use these to remove bits of waste from her jaws. It may have been this movement that made the damselfly nymph realise that below lurked danger and the nymph at this point moved off at speed and into the weeds. These tank observations have proven very interesting, both from behaviour and identification points of view through to some nice photo opportunities that I probably would never encounter otherwise. Hopefully, I can continue to observe the changes they make through to their emergence.

Flippin' heck, Marc! That's a chance in a million that you've captured to perfection! I'm amazed by the markings and colouring of the Water Boatman - I thought that they were just plain black (note to self - must pay more attention!).